Markets vary, but buying a home and selling it in 2-3 years, you may end up losing money once you add in all of the extra costs.

Also thinking of buying a single family and then flipping it to a developer to tear down and build new multi-family that seems to be going up everywhere.Any advice is appreciated!

A great way to network and meet people in your local community is to attend in person meet ups.

Medium term opens up my property options. 

You get what you pay for, but if well maintained they will hold up.

I have done very well in Chicago because I grew up here.

Matt,I'm working on a similar situation up in CT. 

You could ask them if you could start with the process-ie have a builder look at the property (with the owner okaying when you do it to avoid problems with people currently there), come up with plans, so you can start as early in the new year as possible.

We have never used real estate attorney for dirty work regarding foreclosures or pre-foreclosures, other than to close the deal and/or deal with any issues that may come up in a contract. 

As far as selling, we have used a flat fee broker for the past 5  years and what we have saved really adds up.